4 Fantastic Facebook Marketing Ideas to Increase Fan Engagement

As someone who isn’t new to Facebook marketing, you know that the social networking giant continually makes changes to its guidelines and algorithms. And sometimes, it can be frustrating since all of your fans don’t see your content that is posted organically.

If you’ve seen a loss in fan engagement rates on Facebook and minimal reach to those who currently “Like” your page, the following smart Facebook marketing campaigns may help spur some creative ideas on how to market your product on Facebook. These brands and organizations have utilized the social platform in clever ways that resulted in maximum impact.

Creative Facebook Marketing Ideas

Manifest Digital is known for creating effective social marketing campaigns for its cereal brands. One of the most recent successes was for Honey Bunches of Oats in which the team at Manifest ran their “50 Million Smiles and Counting,” Facebook campaign that leveraged a Facebook coupon app to increase Honey Bunches of Oats’ fan count and engagement. They also smartly tapped into their fanbase on Instagram, and across both social platforms, fans shared testimonial videos, images and quotes. The cross-promotional approach created engaging and fresh user-generated content across Honey Bunches of Oats’ social channels.

It probably goes without saying that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is one of the best Facebook marketing campaigns ever created. In the summer of 2014, people living with ALS wanted to raise more awareness of this lesser-publicized condition by having people dump buckets of ice water over their heads, post videos on Facebook of the act and then issuing a challenge to their friends and family to do the same. The ALS Association reached their goals and then some, raising not only awareness, but online traffic and sales.

Results: 17 million videos from 159 countries, including celebrity videos made by Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc. seen by 440 million people all over the world. 70 billion video views. $220 million funds raised. Zero marketing dollars spent.

Utilizing both Facebook and Twitter, Qdoba created “Qdoba’s Queso Showdown” which asked fans to vote for their favorite new Qdoba queso. The reason Qdoba set out to do this wasn’t to increase Facebook “Likes” but rather interact with their current customers and fanbase. The results were updated in real-time over the contest period, which kept fans engaged with the effort, thus increasing more buzz and excitement. This social campaign worked because it piqued your interest effectively; who doesn’t like giving their opinion — especially on social media platforms?

Results: Qdoba received instantaneous feedback of what their customers liked and didn’t like. Modest increase in sales. Fan engagement.

The Ohio State Buckeyes successfully utilized cross-promotional social media strategies by implementing the BT:Social platform by Brand Thunder to increase fan engagement rates. The Facebook app allowed Ohio State to develop a strong connection with fans, which also included sponsorship placements in their official branded browser theme. In a social promotion called “Player of the Week” fans who downloaded the official OSU mobile browser app received push notifications which enticed them to vote for who they thought was the best player of each game. Upon voting, the fan would automatically be prompted to sync their app with Facebook to push out the “Player of the Week” messaging to their friends — increasing awareness.

Results: OSU received valuable demographic information about each fan who used the app to vote. Engagement rates increased.